Absolutely (Mostly) True

I think I need to stop getting hung up on precise wording. The Thirteenth Article of our Faith says, in part, that we "believe all things," which obviously isn't true. There are "things" (including principles, doctrines, and teachings, especially those of other faiths) that we don't believe. To say that "we believe all things" is so untrue that I wonder if there's context that the Thirteenth Article of Faith leaves out. Paul couldn't have meant that Christians do or should believe everything they hear or read.

Perhaps I should stop trying to take things so literally. I know that the church is supposed to be a source of absolute truth, but I find that many of the church's teachings are more generally true than absolutely true, like God being omnipotent, which is mostly true, but with a few specific exceptions. If I try to think of all of the church's teachings as being "mostly true" instead of "absolutely true," then any contradictions in the teachings of the church are merely rare exceptions to generally true statements instead of evidence that one statement or another must be false.

But the thing is, I shouldn't have to mentally add words like "most" and "usually" to statements coming from representatives of the church. They should have the diligence to include such qualifiers themselves. True, it may be necessary to oversimplify some Gospel topics so that we can understand them, but in such cases, the teachers should honestly admit that their teachings are necessarily oversimplified. If one presents an idea as being absolutely true, one should be careful to ensure that what they say is, in fact, absolutely true. Heck, even I try to only say true statements, even when I'm not claiming to be presenting the Word of God. I would hope that the Prophets and Apostles and everyone else who writes Scripture would choose their words at least a carefully as some guy with a blog.

But, given that they don't, I'll try to filter their words through a layer of qualifiers that will allow me to explain away any apparent contradictions in teachings, because the alternative is to doubt the teachers of "absolute truth" when I find out that what they're teaching is not actually absolutely true.